Writing Challenge: Take One

Myself and fellow blogger http://she-raswimpylittlesiste​r.blogspot.com/ are currently engaged in a writing challenge. We have set each other the task of writing one short story per week, which we will then post on our blogs.

I have already posted the first bit of this but it was so peculiar that I fancied continuing on and seeing where it went. I hope you enjoy it :)

Once, there was the prettiest little serial killer you ever did see.

She had long golden hair, that she kept in glorious condition and big blue eyes that sparkled due to a regular administration of eye drops. She kept herself in good shape and had a lithe and toned body. If she was going to be the last thing someone ever saw, she wanted them to at least have a good view. She practiced smiling in the mirror daily, so that she could do it under any circumstances. It was bright, breezy and cheerful and (to her mind) not in any way horrific.

However, our little serial killer had a problem. To whit, she was terrified of people.

Most would think this an advantage for a serial killer - after all, wouldn't it add to their motivation? To destroy the very things that frightened them?

Sadly, our little killer was so terrified of people that she lived way out into the forest, all alone but for the acres of trees that surrounded her. She couldn't get within 10 meters of another human being without breaking out into a cold sweat and trembling all over. Thus, killer though she may be, she had never actually killed another human being in her life.

She knew that, if she could get over her fear of people, she would be a perfectly competent serial killer. After all, she performed beautiful mutilations upon the corpses she dug from the hallowed ground of the graveyard, or, when she was feeling particularly brave, stole from the mortuary. Yes, it took a great deal of skill to peel the skin whole from a corpse, leaving it undamaged and translucent. It made beautiful parchment, especially when she burned graceful swirls and curlicues around the edge to make a delicate, fanciful border. She made a fortune on eBay selling those.

But still, she was a serial killer who couldn't kill. It plagued our little killer mightily that, due to her own terror, she could not be true to herself. She had tried all sorts of things to get over it - she had a whole library full of self help books and many self hypnosis tapes but to no avail. She was still completely terrified of getting near a living person.

She was sure that other serial killers would laugh at her, should they ever find out.

Thus our little serial killer spent her days in seclusion, with only the animals and her collection of mouldering corpses. Neither of them were much good at varied conversations. The animals could only bark or growl and the corpses only made a noise at a certain level of decomposition – at which point she would have to get rid of them anyway due to the smell. In fact, the only communication she had with anyone was through her eBay account – although much of it was to do with the wares she sold, several of them, pleased with her exceptional customer service and lack of interest as to why they needed parchment made of human skin, would send her little titbits of information, usually small pieces of gossip about other sellers or about items coming up for auction that they thought might be of interest to her. Mostly the auction items they suggested were various skinning tools or body restraints but occasionally they would send her odd, out of the blue, items.

Such was the case when one of her best buyers sent her this advert:

For Sale:

One genetically modified, human science experiment. Recently escaped into the wild, slightly shop soiled. 1 head, 2 arms and 2 legs, all in working order. Stands at a rather short 5” 5”. Presumed male.

Caution:

Abilities unknown but currently non-violent and mute. Has no training in the social graces. Purchased at buyers risk.

She stared at it for days.

A small humanoid that couldn’t speak. She didn’t think it would be dangerous. After all, if it had been in scientist hands for a while and didn’t attack everything in sight, which usually meant it was irrevocably broken. A thing that looked human but could no longer be classified as such.

Which meant it could be perfect for her to practice killing on.

On the day of the auction, our little serial killer was huddled over her laptop. She bit her nails (a bad habit she was trying to break, after all, who wanted to be strangled by someone who didn’t even maintain basic nail care standards) as she watched the countdown to the end of the auction. She hadn’t bid earlier as she didn’t want the price to skyrocket. She waited until 5 minutes before closing before outbidding the others.

Surprisingly, not many people had bid for it (likely the phrase ‘shop-soiled’ had put them off)

She received her genetically altered humanoid for a reasonable sum of £500, not including delivery.

The delivery service turned out to be a rust spotted white van with blacked out windows that turned up in the middle of the night – chucking a black body bag out the rear doors as it drove past without slowing.

Our little serial killer was not best pleased. Not only was she unhappy about being rudely woken in the middle of the night (as would most of us), but as the body bag flew towards her she suddenly realised she must have been ripped off. Her worst fears were confirmed as the bag hit the concrete drive with a sickening crunch.

The whole point of the purchase was to practice killing something alive. She could get her own corpses.

She sighed. At this rate she’d never be a proper serial killer.

Thus, as she started to drag the body bag towards the house, you can understand her surprise when the bag tugged itself out of her hand and sat up.

Startled, she gave a very small shriek and then, out of pure curiosity undid the zipper.

Inside was a very dead person, his head was level with his ears, due to his extremely broken neck. His body, however, didn’t seem to realise this as his large brown eyes were slowly blinking at her.

She regarded him with interest. He looked rather like a marmoset – with his large brown eyes and skinny little frame. She rather suspected that marmosets did not look like Frankenstein’s younger brother, all criss-crossed with ghosts of scars. To be more accurate, he looked like a marmoset that had been shoved through an industrial shredder and then pasted back together by a sleep deprived CSI team.

Just to see what would happen, she righted his head. With a strong slurping sound the skin round his broken neck pulled tight, sucking his spine back together. Within minutes there was only a mottled purple mark to show that anything had actually happened.

For a while they just stared at each other.

“What’s your name?” Asked the serial killer eventually.

The thing opened its mouth and hissed. She peered inside its open mouth.

‘Ah, no tongue. So you can’t regrow back things that have been cut off then?’

The thing just stared at her.

She sniffed the air – it smelled rank. It had soiled itself while trapped in the bag.

“Follow me then.” She told it. She was amused that it, like a marmoset, used all four limbs to move towards her, all it was missing was a tail.

She led it to the back yard and then thoroughly hosed it down with water and bleach. She dried it off and wrapped it up in one of her old dressing gowns.

Finally she let it come inside. It sat on the kitchen floor, staring at her. She crouched down.

“You know, I think this will work. You will be of enormous help to me. I think I’ll call you Ned.”

Ned hissed at her. With all its various scars and bruises, it was hard to tell but she thought Ned was smiling at her.

She gave it her most brilliant smile back.

And then she stabbed Ned through the heart with a bread knife.

*******

When Ned woke again, a mere 20 minutes later, she had a cup of tea and a bowl of spaghetti bolognaise waiting for him. She mused that perhaps spaghetti had been the wrong choice for someone who clearly didn’t realise what cutlery was for. Still, Ned seemed happy enough to be sponged off and unfazed by either his brief period of death or by her stabbing him.

Yes, our little serial killer was very happy indeed.

Over the next month she practised murdering Ned in a variety of ways. She tried stabbing it with a multitude of implements, from a hot poker to a powered down chainsaw to just mundane knives. Guns, she quickly discovered, were just dull. She tried drowning it once but that was far too inconvenient, plus she was sure that other victims would struggle a lot more than Ned did. Ned just lay quietly in the bath until it stopped breathing. In fact, the only time she failed to kill Ned was when she tried to electrocute him. Normally, when she murdered Ned, it had no reaction whatsoever; it just let her do whatever she wanted. This time however, when she came towards him with the cut cables, blue sparks jumping between the stripped ends, it actually shied away from her, it’s delicate marmoset frame shuddering. Out of kindness, she stabbed him with the blades of the smoothie blender instead (even though she had already tried that last week). She didn’t like to see Ned unhappy, especially when he was so helpful.

She limited herself to murdering Ned once a day. Although she really, really wanted to kill him all day, she wasn’t sure how Ned’s body would handle it. Plus it was just so handy having an extra set of limbs when she went grave robbing.

Despite the fact that Ned got murdered on a daily basis, it seemed quite content. Our little serial killer would often watch it chasing butterflies on the front lawn whilst she tended to her compost heap (occasionally it would make glooping noises and it was always best to arm yourself with a flamethrower when that happened) and most nights it would curl up in its box under her dissection table and make purring noises while she stripped the skin off of her latest corpse. It still couldn’t quite get the hang of cutlery but things were going much better now that she’d given up on trying to make it use the toilet and just given it a litter box in the back yard.

It fact, things had gone so well with Ned that our little serial killer was excitedly planning her first ‘proper’ murder.

By now she knew the attendants schedule at the nearby morgue off by heart. Normally, she would take great pains to avoid any of those scheduled to work late but now she was reconsidering. Surely this time she would be able to make one of the living occupants her victim rather than the corpses.

It took her a month to plan and choose her victim.

She picked one of the interns – a young, brown haired weedy type – someone she thought would be easy to overpower despite their differences in size. Plus he always drank a mug of thick syrupy coffee at exactly 11.15pm, easy enough to slip a tranquiliser into it.

He hissed exactly like Ned when he woke up on the autopsy table – this was most likely due to her having punched him in the throat as a precaution.

Although our little serial killer was immensely proud of herself for being able to get near another human, (her hands were barley trembling at all!) she was finding the whole experience rather…unsatisfying.

For a start he kept fainting. She had barely even began to cut into him when bam! Out like a light. She kept having to wait for him to regain consciousness. It was time consuming and downright impolite. Ned always stayed awake right until the very end, it knew how to be a proper participant and it couldn’t even figure out what the toilet was for!

Our little serial killer was quite hurt by this – she’d even done her hair and make up especially nice and he didn’t seem to appreciate it at all. Plus, when she gave him her most winning smile, the one she’d spent years on, she was sure that he’d screamed.

After she had broken a fifth finger she realised that she was merely breaking bones for the sake of it, that in fact she wasn’t having any fun at all. His whimpering was really starting to give her a headache and his body was uninspiring to say the least.

She missed Ned. Ned was always a good victim. It was always attentive and knew the exact moment to twitch and everything. Ned was a professional.

Our little serial killer abandoned the intern on the autopsy table. She knew the next shift would be coming in soon, and although she had made arrangements to kill them too, she couldn’t bear it if it turned out to be as disappointing as this. So she left him bleeding and weeping and made her way home.

Ned wasn’t there.

Frantically she searched for him, tearing through her various storage rooms and laboratories. Eventually she found him in the larder. He’d dragged his favourite sleeping basket into the corner and was huddled in it, facing the wall.

“Ned” She called softly, “Neddy”

Ned said nothing, not even the merest hiss. His head sunk even lower.

She crawled towards him.

“Ned, don’t be like that” She held out her hands. “What’s the matter?”

He glanced briefly at her hands and then turned away. She looked down at them, surprised. Even though the only light that came into the larder was through its open door, she could tell that they were still coated in the interns’ blood.

She also noticed the blue, flashing lights that were spilling across the floor. Our little serial killer, full of disappointment, had forgotten that it was a bad idea to leave witnesses behind. And if you are going to be a strange recluse, it is only natural that townsfolk will be curious about you.

She took a deep breath.

“Ned, darling, I am really sorry. It was horrible and totally incomparable to you. I promise you that I will never ever try to kill anyone but you again.”

Ned looked at her and hissed.

“I promise sweetie, you’re the only one for me. And now we really have to escape.”

Fortunately she’d made sure the house had many hidden tunnels. And once she’d detonated all the dynamite buried into the foundations it was practically plain sailing.

Her and Ned agreed that the inferno looked particularly fetching against the cold indifference of the bone coloured moon.

******

A few months later the deed to a mad scientist’s castle retreat was purchased on eBay.

The locals agreed that the new residents were infinitely more preferable to the previous ones. For a start the lovely brunette with the beautiful smile obviously took excellent, hygienic care of herself, which was a nice change. Her monkey pet might be a little odd, but modern career women had all sorts of strange pets nowadays didn’t they? And it’s not like she’d want to stay in that cursed castle all by herself. Besides, it was quite cute the way it ran awkwardly across the grass, trying to catch the bats that infested the grounds.

Perhaps, the villagers thought, they might finally be able to put their pitchforks in storage.